Archive for June, 2015

Part of the wonder of Bandon Dunes lies a few miles north of the golf courses. Bandon Beach seems to always produce fabulous seascapes. After a day of mediocre golf this is a pretty serene end of the day:

It seems as though on every Bandon trip I end up playing the Old Macdonald and Trails courses on the same day. It’s a pretty demanding effort: Old Mac is just so expansive with long holes and distances between the tee boxes while trails is the hilliest of the Bandon Dunes tracks. Curiously, Old Mac has become my favorite course here in spite of its difficulty and unique truly links layout. I had my best round ever at Old Mac this morning with an 86. And I was holding my own on Trails –my nemesis course here– until I just wore out and carded triple bogeys on 16 and 18 for a final score of 94.

I can’t seem to stay away from this place no matter how mediocre my golf game is. And with the current heat wave in North Bend I had more than enough incentive to head south for the third time this year. What’s not to like with views like this one looking north from the 16th tee at the Bandon Dunes course.

And here’s a panorama of the 16th fairway, one of the most beautiful golf holes in America (tee box on the right, green between the ocean and those dark green shrubs on the left).
For the record, I shot very poor rounds of 95 (Bandon Dunes) and 98 (Pacific Dunes), two of my worst score here ever.

The drive from North Bend to Bandon was an odd one. It was nearly 80 degrees when I left but I drove through rain, bright sun, and overcast. It’s only in the 60s in Bandon and very cloudy. Even in the nine o’clock fog, Bandon Beach is eerily lovely.

It’s amazing that we started the day in Denali and ended up some 14 hours later back home.

On the bus between Denali and Talkeetna

Again it was a pretty easy trip. We bused from Denali to the Anchorage airport with marvelous scenery the whole way. Then it was first-class seats for the flight home with a luscious dinner and stunning views of the Canadian coast along the route.